Originally Posted By: JohnJohnJohn

As I understand it, some scientists fear that, while AI has been on a fairly slow (and controllable) rise for some time, it is bound to reach sentience (or something we would be unable to discern from sentience) in the near future and once it does that it will then accelerate it's "intellect" far beyond ours.

Lots of thoughtful and informed comments on this important subject. JJJ appears quite well-read and his quote agrees with the authors of the paper in the OP. As far as a slow rise, yes. 15 years ago I dabbled with ANNs (Artificial Neural Networks) for the purpose of fitting large quantities of test data to a "formula" so that extrapolations could be made. My results with it were poor and so I remained with traditional algebra and calculus. The other concern we had at that time was you could never de-construct how the ANN reached the answer it came to; they were basically black-boxes.

What is fascinating to me, is this subject is at the intersection of computer science, machine learning, human/animal psychology, neuroscience, religion, philosophy, ethics, national and international security, human advancement, business, commerce and probably a few more domains.

JJJ makes other good points such as how brutal a race we humans are against everything and everyone. And if large AI systems are trained on vast quantities of human generated material, it's obvious what will be in it's "DNA".

Personally, I'm disappointed that we don't have a solid understanding and definition of what sentience is. To simply say "We'll know it when we see it." is not a satisfying answer. Amoung other things, it may be too late when we "see it".

If the past is any indicator of the future regarding the capacity of US elected officials, we can say they can offer no guidance on matters of technology. I remember being home from work and sick with the flu when the Congressional hearings on animal/human cloning was the headlines. Remember Dolly? And so I watched them live on CSPAN. You wouldn't believe how inept these congress people were. At that time I'm sure I had long forgotten 70% of my high school biology. These people had forgotten far more than that. [Btw, the team lead on the Dolly project, Ian Wilmut, recently died. I think he was British.]

FWIW, the Europeans are far ahead of the US when it comes to regulating not only social media but also AI. Hopefully they will lead the way in a well-considered and safe manner.

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